For the record, I haven't said that (in fact I see no return to another form of capitalism at all).

Yes, sorry, I misinterpreted your previous comment.

For the purposes of this thread, the uncoupling of public sentiment and macroeconomic trends is more interesting than the actual reasons behind the current upswing.

In your other comment you wrote,

If so, perhaps Stimmung has yet to catch up with reality.

It's more like they go in opposite directions. At the time of the World Cup, when positive macroeconomic trends were also already showing, public sentiment as measured by various indexes was rather positive (by German standards).

And I found that so striking, I wanted to make sure I understood it correctly: You're saying that up to the World Cup, real economic conditions were actually not that great, but public sentiment was pretty good, but since then, as macroeconomic trends started getting positive, public sentiment has gone down?

If so, this is indeed pretty fascinating indeed. I am sure someone has diaried something along these lines already, but it would be interesting to compare and contrast such trends across various countries. For example, Colman and Andre the Giant have written about the falseness of the American Dream. It would be interesting to examine just how far education, myths and propaganda can convince people -- negatively or positively -- that things are different than they are. (I guess on the extreme side you have North Korea -- but even there I think far fewer people are buying the party line than merely pretend to.)

I see Jerome has just launched another counteroffensive against neoliberal criticisms of France...